Contacts Template for Networking
Networking is one of the key factors in the success of most young professionals. Whether it is gaining valuable advice or getting a leg up in the hiring process, networking opens doors and unlocks knowledge that would otherwise be hard to find.
best way to track networking contacts
As you meet contacts in finance and build your network, you will need to track and monitor your relationships with these individuals. It is important not to let a relationship die off, and it is also critical to remember certain key components of conversations of the past.
Attached is a networking template which helps you determine when you need to reach out to contacts and helps keep track of your database better than LinkedIn.
Business Contact List Template Excel
My personal contact list is broken up between “Senior Level”, “Junior Level”, “Coworkers”, “In College”, and “Family.” It is important to differentiate your contact levels. For one, it is ideal to keep your senior to junior level contacts around 50/50 in order to maintain experienced mature employees whom may retire in the next 10-15 years, and those that will grow with you in your career for the rest of your life.
I created a column in the contact list to break out current company and previous employers. In case at some point in the future you have an interview for a particular company, it is beneficial to be able to track down any contacts you may have which would have an insider’s perspective to the company, or very well may be able to reference you to the people hiring.
You will notice in two of the columns, there is a differentiation between “Last contacted” and “Last in contact.” The difference between the two is last contacted is the date in which you wrote last, and last in contact is the last time they actually replied to you.
Following Up With Networking Contacts
My general rule of thumb for following up with contacts is to have at least spoken to them in the last 6 months. Some may want it shorter or longer, but that is the way I have it set up right now. The months since last contact column will turn red when the last contact is more than 6 months. This lets me know to email or call them soon.
I hope this helps set up a basic framework for each of your contact lists. Personally, this helps me make sure to stay on top of staying in touch with everyone I know.
Read More About Networking on WSO
- How to network with recruiters (HR)? What's the difference between networking with HR people and networking with bankers?
- How NOT to Network
- How important is networking?
Decided to Pursue a Wall Street Career? Learn How to Network like a Master.
Inside the WSO Finance networking guide, you'll get a comprehensive, all-inclusive roadmap for maximizing your networking efforts (and minimizing embarrassing blunders). This info-rich book is packed with 71 pages of detailed strategies to help you get the most of your networking, including cold emailing templates, questions to ask in interviews, and action steps for success in navigating the Wall Street networking process.
Attachment | Size |
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Networking_WSO.xls 51 KB | 51 KB |
Wow, thanks for sharing. This is good stuff.
Threw you an SB. Thanks.
Good Stuff, I take notes in the name cell by typing shift+F2. This way your spreadsheet doesn't get out of control with long comments distorting the cells. Also, include if you didn't get a hold of them or didn't respond you can put a details in the "last contacted" cell.
What else do you monkeys use?
Excellent. I used another cell, and it's a mess.
Thanks! Now if you want more sb's send me yours fully filled out :D
I only have 4...any others care to join? We can make it a banaorgy in here...
Thanks for this. Would throw you a SB if I had one though
Much appreciated
Thanks, very useful
This is nice.
Has anyone tried to supplement lists like this with a calendar? I use a calendar to keep tabs on my networking. It is not as convenient as an actual list but it helps me in the process of both researching and planning. I set dates when I will contact people again if I have something concrete and its very easy to look back at past months to see who I have been in contact with recently and who I have not.
Thanks you've been a real resource on WSO!
I've got a similar spreadsheet. I also added columns for "Total times contacted" and "Education (undergrad/mba)."
I break mine down by IB, PE, HF, etc. Maybe it's better to do Senior/Junior. I'll look into it.
Thanks El. I have never tried a calendar.
I think if you use senior and junior, you can do a quick sort based on industry.
I'm just starting out, so I don't have a spreadsheet/calendar for this.
But if I were to use a calendar, it seems a simple way would be make an event when you did contact someone and them set it to repeat x months from now.
Although the spreadsheet takes more time to setup, it seems to payoff better later on by being able to search by industry, relationship type, etc.
I've got a very similiar one with all the salemen/traders/brokers I've been in contact with. Keeps things neat and all in one place
Nice.... SB
Great template...making note of a couple key points of coversation from each meeting would be helpful. Especially to personalize follow-up communication.
Thanks for the advice. I always took it as granted, but I am realizing that networking should be seamlessly managed.
I've been doing this for ages. But I can't believe it never occurred to me to build a "last contact" function. I'm kicking myself, it's so obvious.
I think that "city" is a good one to have.
SB'ed.
I will add one more column to rate the overall experience with a particular contact.
Awesome! SB'd!
thanks for the hard work
+1 SB, thanks!
Excellent template! I've just set it up for myself. Great tool to keep track of everything.
good one
Great template. Better than the excel file I had been using. I'm moving everything over. +1 SB
awesome. thank you!
Just switched to this new template, thanks for sharing.
Very good. I also have a "what we talked about" section where I put what we discussed (I wouldnt want to say I enjoyed learning about this or that when it was actually with someone else).
I also have a column for the source of the contatc where I mention where I met them or who introduced them to me.
Thanks for the template SB +1.
My problem is though im not sure how to follow up, i dont really know what to say if theres no real information. Ideas?
Thanks!
Thanks!
This is brilliant. I've just recently begun networking; this is really going to help organize things. Thanks!
This is something I definitely need to do much, much more of.
Thanks so much for sharing!
Thanks for sharing! Major help. Just the right amount of info...
this is great
Thanks this is great. One thing I like to add is somebody's birthday. Always a good reason to touch base and if you integrate it into your calendar with early enough reminders you can always add a personal touch by sending a card or note.
throw an MROUND in that months since last contacted cell to class it up a little more...
I have been networking like crazy, and while I've mastered the first call, I never know what to say to reconnect with them...any ideas for those 2nd emails/calls?
You are awesome.
You are awesome.
Respect
This is solid. Very easy to lose contact with people over the years.
Thanks for a template. It will be really useful!
This is really useful, thanks for the share. I've modified it to my liking and it is now the perfect networking tool.
this post is beyond helpful!
This is absolutely wonderful! I've been working on a template like this for awhile. The one thing I wish it had and something I've been trying to figure how to implement is keeping track of the contacts I have access to through my contacts. If anyone has any ideas on how to organize this in Excel, I'd love to hear them! :)
I've been using this site for my Ibank networking - syncs with gmail/linkedin etc and has reminders. So far its a huge time saver.. contactually (dot) com
Excellent. Thank you, great help!
How do you trigger cell to go red at +6 months? That is pretty cool. Thank you for the template.
Much appreciated
good stuff!
Many thankings
This is really great. Thank you!
oldie but goodie :-)
This is awesome stuff, you get a silver banana! Thank you.
Very helpful, thanks for sharing !
Awesome template, thank you very much. People truly don't realize how quickly you can lose contact with people. If you aren't doing a lunch or similar with someone at least once every two months if not more frequently you can forget about them remembering you.
wheres the attachment?
Would also like the template
Would also like the template. Bump...
should be there below the blog post now :-) ...(small config fixed)
Is it just me or does the file not work
Nice! Thanks, it has been great for me. I added a column to automatically see the number of contacts I have been able to make. [=Cell("Row",A1)]. You can put that in cell next to the first contact you made and recorded, then copy that down and it will easily number each addition to your list. Thanks so much!
I know this is an old post. But I wanted to share a quick Macro I made for this file. WallStreetOasis.com AndyLouis It's not much but this forum helps me a ton so I wanted to give back what I could....
I was reading "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi and he talks about grouping your contacts in a sort of priority method. I decided to put people in categories "1" (I want to stay in touch at least every three months, "2" at least semi-annually, or "3" just say hi about once a year. So I added a "Priority Code" to Column N. and for each contact I give them a 1, 2, or 3. (Column L is "Last in Contact" and M is "City" just FYI)
I am learning to code a bit using VBA and I wanted to add some extra functionality to this list by changing the way the "Months Since Last Contacted" (Column K) changes to red. If my dates don't meet the above criteria the then that cell in Column K will turn red... instead of all being the same, this makes it so each one is dependent on the date we last spoke and the category I assign them .. I then threw a button on it and assigned it the Macro.
**note you probably will have to delete the other conditional formatting otherwise it may cause an error. Too many pointers trying to assign the same cells different things.
This is not terribly useful or complicated, but i just wanted to share in case anyone wants to use it. I tried to put comments that made it very clear what each line was for in case anyone wanted to tweak it to make it their own.... Wasn't comfortable uploading the file in case I left some sort of identifying marks in it to either myself or my colleagues. ------------------Macro Below-------Copy and Paste, assign it to a button and you're set-----------------------------
Option Explicit
Sub PriorityColorChange()
'Gold Jacket, Green Jacket, who gives a shit?!
'For'Bad' The Font Is: (156,0,6) The Background Is: (255,199,206) 'For 'Good' The Font Is: (0,97,0) The Background Is: (198,239,206) 'For 'Neutral' The Font Is: (156,101,0) The Background Is: (255,235,156)
'Declare R (stands for Row) as a variable type of integer Dim R As Integer
End Sub
Hey GoldJacketGreenJacket , thanks a bunch for sharing the macro. I did encounter a problem with my cells not turning back to normal after being formatted by it though. It seems your macro changes interior color of a cell to red when the "months since contacted" threshold is passed but doesn't change it back after bringing it back under that threshold. I added this line to the Else statement near the end, and it fixed my problem.
Range("K" & R).Interior.ColorIndex = xlNone
Also, the priority 3 code seems to be using "9" instead of "12". So anyone reading this be sure to make that change.
Just a heads up.
No offense - but I think networking should be organic enough that you don't need a reminder to speak with someone.
No offense taken! I agree with you for the most part and this is very easy if you're close to someone or work together fairly often. But I think it's useful to make an effort to stay in touch with others you may not be very close to or from a reason to talk to all the time.
Just an example, have you ever thought of a person who you could be really helpful to you or helpful to a friend of yours, but you realize you haven't spoken in almost a year and now your first contact is going to be asking for a favor? Or worse yet, hitting them up for a random hello and then a week later talking to them about what you intended (obvious! Hey we haven't spoken in a year and now I'm hitting you up twice in a week one of which is for a favor) I had this happen a few months ago, my friend's kid was interested in going to a particular university. I knew an Alumnus who I thought could be very helpful for her and I wanted to connect them. It wasn't the end of the world, but how much smoother could it be if I had checked in every so often and this was just a regular exchange.
Again, not for everyone and if you can remember to stay in touch with a ton of people at once without any system, then by all means. Just wanted to share it.
Hi, I was wondering - how exactly do you keep in touch without getting annoying? I find it very hard to keep in touch, espiacially with more senior people that I dont know that well BC I'm never sure how I should follow up after inital contact (After meeting and adding them on LinkedIn).
Thanks for the template!
I'm by no means an expert, so take what I say with a grain of salt
If you are just sending the first email. Just simply thank them for the meeting, mention something you had a connection with (preferably mutual... Hometown etc)
When pinging someone down the road. You need a reason to be emailing them. Best/easiest is probably something in their career. I sent one yesterday to a consultant acquaintance that recently left his firm and went to run strategy at one of his clients (I assume it was a client, that's usually how it goes). When I emailed him, it looked like he had been there for about a month so far. I sent him a quick email along the lines of "Hey Carl (not his name), just wanted to check in and say congrats on the new role. I see you left insert city and are in insert city now. I have a few buddies in that city so if you're ever in a jam, please don't hesitate to reach out. Best to you and your family.
You can also keep a quick note of something they're interested in. Patriots Football, hunting, music, wine, cars, laptops.... "Hey Jim, it's been a while since we spoke at the *University of Beer bongs * I was reading Garden and Gun last week and saw this article on a new Whiskey Distillery which is trying to match the ingredients and mash-bill of Pappy. (If someone finds a bourbon like this, PM me) I know you're somewhat of a connoisseur and it reminded me. Just wanted to pass it along. Hope all is well! "
Sounds reasonable, thanks!
Thanks, very usefull!
it's angels like you who give me hope during my darkest days in college
You can also download your contacts from Linkedin in an excel spreadsheet. Probably will be a bit easier.
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